Just when you think you've seen the iPhone perform its last magic trick (making you eggs benedict, solving the inverse Galois problem, a brief appearance on Dancing With the Stars) something like this comes along to make your jaw drop just a little bit more. Touchpad for the iPhone is built on top of VNsea, but instead of allowing you to navigate your desktop on the device, it becomes what is essentially a wireless, remote trackpad, which gives you direct access to your system as if you were using a mouse or touch device for input. It sounds interesting in description, but looks amazing in execution -- check the video after the break to see what it does, then go get the app loaded up and try it yourself.

Apple is up to its old tricks again: filing crazy patent requests for wild devices like the process is going out of style. This time, the boys and girls in Cupertino have really delivered a doozy: a wide touchpad for a portable computer. Okay, honestly, it does seem to be just a very large trackpad with some "multi-touch" capabilities. The pad would take up some of the space where you typically rest your hands when typing, though according to the patent documents, the system would be smart enough to distinguish between desired input and accidental movement. Clearly, this kind of technology puts Apple one step closer to its ultimate goal of really, really huge touchpads.

Update - While this is a continuation of an older Apple patent, this is a new application filing, just in case there was any confusion.

[Via PC Joint]